1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to surveillance systems and methods, and more particularly to surveillance systems and methods that utilize background subtraction and computer vision technology to monitor, recognize, and track objects and unusual activities in real time for residential, commercial offices and warehouse.
2. Description of Related Art
A programmable boundary pet containment system for providing invisible fence to control the access of animals to areas outside of programmed boundaries is known in prior art. More specifically, by way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,043,748 to Touchton et al. discloses a programmable boundary pet containment system that comprises a programmable relay collar which is provided on an animal to transmit positional data as detected from positional satellites to a remotely located processing station. The processing station calculates the relayed data to determine the position of the animal relative to a configuration data file establishing confinement area boundaries. Similar inventions are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,271,757; 6,700,492; and 6,903,682.
Security systems that monitor living or nonliving, moving or standing objects other than pets are also known in prior art. They may utilize different technologies involving sensors or video cameras.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,068,166 to Shibata et al. discloses a break-in detection system including a detection sensor of an FBG type fiber optics for detecting an intruder to climb over a fence around a premises, and a detection sensor of an OTDR type for detecting an intruder trying to demolish the fence.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,084,761 to Izumei et al. discloses a device including a security system which emits a radio wave from a building to a predetermined area outside the building to detect an object and on the basis of output of the object detecting unit, a judgment is made as to whether or not the object will intrude into the predetermined area.
Systems designed to monitor predetermined area, places or objects using video cameras that provide a continuous feed of video data that is either displayed in real time on a display device and/or recorded to a recording device are known in the art and in marketplace. While these systems provide for capture and recordation of video data depicting the conditions and/or occurrences within the monitored area, they do not provide a means of easily determining when and where an occurrence or condition has taken place. Nor do they provide for any means of analyzing the information depicted by the video data. Therefore, U.S. Pat. No. 7,106,333 to Milinusic (2006) discloses a system for collecting surveillance data from one or more sensor units and incorporating the surveillance data into a surveillance database. The sensor unit is configured to monitor a predetermined area, and is further configured to detect any changes in the area and capture an image of the changes within the area.
In the past, computational speed and technique has limited the real-time monitoring, processing and analysis applications of video camera surveillance data. As a consequence, most of the video camera surveillance data are watched, monitored or analyzed by local or remote security guards. There could be human bias or neglect when the surveillance video data are monitored and analyzed by human. Thus, there exists a need to have surveillance systems and methods that monitor, recognize, and track objects and unusual activities by computer software programs. Based on advanced computational technique and software, as well as sophisticated hardware that are currently available in the field, the present invention provides systems and methods that can monitor, recognize, and track the objects, and determine when and where an occurrence or condition has taken place without using additional sensor units.